Cory Schwisow, interim director for Monroe County Emergency Management, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
The county had a recent meeting with FEMA.
Schwisow said, “About two weeks ago we had a Florida Emergency Preparedness Association mid season conference up in Cape Coral. What we have special here in Florida is that executive director Kevin Guthrie is part of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. He is also a member of the FEMA Review Council, which is a great asset. He came up, spoke with us for about three days and what the emergency managers in the state of Florida, we had a great opportunity that no other state in America had, is that we were able to actually ask questions to members of the FEMA Review Council, and it was similar to BOCC type conversation, where we have three minutes and get up and we can kind of voice our opinion about our concerns and some of the strengths that FEMA has over the years. One of the things that was reassured to us is that nothing is going to change in the form of response from FEMA this year. There’s still a lot of speculation in the years to come, but that was very, very reassuring. In the Stafford Act, it’s mandated that the federal government provides at least 75% of all reimbursements when there is that federally declared disaster. Where that causes concern for Monroe County is if we have an isolated incident that only affects Monroe County, and we are on the hook, and we don’t meet that $144 million disaster threshold. In the same breath, if you look over the last decade or so, there has only been three incidents in the entire state of Florida that would not have met that $177 million threshold in the state of Florida. So it is concerning to think that we could get hit by something and not affect any other county. But what’s encouraging is that this year we can rest easy that the federal government is going to support us, similar to previous years.”
What were the three incidents where the threshold was not met?
Schwisow said, “It was the Surfside incident up in Miami Dade, the Broward County floods and Hurricane Debbie hit such a remote area that it would have been borderline meeting that new threshold, but any other storm over the last several years would have easily met the $177 million threshold.”
The will be still a lot of financial responsibility.
Schwisow explained, “You look at Hurricane Irma, just in debris removal alone, was over $20 million, but how that split up, you have 75% of the cost is covered by the federal government. The other 25% is split between the state and the county, so we will still be on the hook for 12 and a half percent of all costs related to a response and recovery from an incident. So it still can have a financial impact on our county.”
What is it like day to day at Emergency Management?
Schwisow said, “I would love to get into a readiness mode and say, okay, it’s hurricane season. Nothing else matters. But we are continuously reviewing our plans and policies, meeting with our partners, and just recently, July 17, our team put together a radiological emergency preparedness exercise in Key Largo, which exercised a reception center and shelter opening if we had a Turkey Point incident. We haven’t done this exercise in eight years, and so we were partnered with FEMA, the American Red Cross, ourselves, the school district, Department of Health, the sheriff’s office and Fire Rescue, where we exercise opening that reception center. How does everything work? How do we bring our radiological emergency equipment and to actually perform those contamination and decontamination practices with role players. It was an outstanding exercise. FEMA had nothing but great things to say about our operation and planning down here in Monroe County. So we definitely stay busy. We have other hazards other than hurricanes that were susceptible to down here, and we want to make sure that we have all of our plans up to date, ready to respond. Continue to monitor our National Weather Service page down here in Key West and if you haven’t done so, make your preparations for the peak of hurricane season, which is within about 30 days, September and October, our peak season. About 90% of the storms are still yet to come. On our social media page, the state of Florida has listed dozens of items that are now going to be permanently tax free that’s related to a hurricane event. So batteries are, flashlights and things like that. You can find that list on our social media page, on Facebook, and I’ll make sure we can update that on our website and get that out to the public, because it’s now not just going to be a tax free period, it’ll be permanently tax free for the state of Florida.”
For more information, click here: http://monroecountyem.com/